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Category Archives: organizing

Notice: I am neither dead nor AWOL. Just busier than ever, with a suddenly-really-pending deadline, new blogging at Guernica, and reporting for Newsworks.org – the web portal of WHYY, my local PBS/NPR station.

Here is the very first story I ever pitched to WHYY’s Alan Tu, back in September, Given my background in sussing out tenant stories in Manhattan, I knew quickly that there had to be a story in our slice of the national foreclosure crisis. It’s a story about predatory lending, about neighborhoods, and about a pioneering legislator who figured out 30 years ago what to do about all this.

The story’s also a phoenix: it sat in the pending pile, right behind breaking news, until the city suspended all foreclosures AND I happened upon the perfect interview subject. I hope it absorbs and amuses some folks.

Now to my follow-up story, and to cutting my book manuscript by two-thirds.

One of the things that makes me personally sad about Zinn leaving us when he did is that I’d hoped, when Ain’t Marchin’ was published, to introduce him to Garett Reppenhagen (left), president of Veterans Green Jobs and former president of Iraq Veterans Against the War. The latter had told me, when I interviewed him two years ago, that Zinn’s People’s History had been a catalyst for him. “I walked into this cool bookstore in Colorado Springs,” Reppenhagen told me, “and I said I’m a high school dropout and probably going to Iraq. What do I need to know?” In addition to recommending John Perkin’s Confessions of an Economic Hit Man (also an excellent choice), the bookstore clerk insisted he buy the Zinn. A sniper who was at that moment stationed in Bosnia, it took some time, he said: but afterwards felt changed forever.

Now it turns out that Zinn wouldn’t have been surprised to hear that, since another young vet from the previous Iraq war, Jeff Paterson, also credits him. Jeff, the tireless and inhumanly tall coordinator of Courage to Resist, tells about discovering Zinn in Asia in 1989:

At the time, I was a 20-year-old Marine artillery controller becoming disillusioned with what I was seeing stationed in Okinawa, the Philippines, and Korea. Reading “People’s History” was certainly an unknowing step I took towards later refusing to fight in Iraq in August 1990. It enabled me to see my individual actions as a part of something much larger—yes, even larger than the Marine Corps.Within a matter of weeks in late 1990 and early 1991, nearly a hundred Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors pledged to refuse to fight—most eventually did time in stockades and brigs. Twice as many service members publicly spoke out against the Gulf War at anti-war protests and rallies—sometimes to dozens, sometimes to 200,000 people. However, unless you were there, or have read a recent edition of “People’s History”, you wouldn’t know any of that ever happened.

Maybe the book will make a small contribution toward lifting that national amnesia, at least a little. Meanwhile, see Jeff below with Michael Wong, a former Army medic who deserted after he learned about My Lai, spent years in Canada and then worked in exactly my job in San Francisco. Watching them interact makes me feel a little unstuck in time.

Illinois prosecutors must be getting really desperate. Their own governor has already declared a moratorium on executions, after all. Bur targeting journalism students is really beyond the pale.

First page of the Bill of Rights, the first of which is?NYT via Raw Story: "Lawyers in the Cook County state’s attorney’s office say that in their quest for justice in the old case, they need every pertinent piece of information about the students’ three-year investigation into Anthony McKinney, who was convicted of fatally shooting a security guard in 1978. Mr. McKinney’s conviction is being reviewed by a judge.

Among the issues the prosecutors need to understand better, a spokeswoman said, is whether students believed they would receive better grades if witnesses they interviewed provided evidence to exonerate Mr. McKinney.”

RawStory adds:

The suggestion that students were encouraged to find evidence of wrongful prosecution even if there were none has raised alarms among some legal experts, who wonder whether Cook County prosecutors may be trying to discredit the project that has caused embarrassment for numerous prosecutors over the past decade.

“They’re either trying to undermine the investigation, or they’re trying to undermine the entire project,” Don Craven, executive director of the Illinois Press Association, told the press last week.

That settles my Halloween costume. I’m wearing tha judge’s robe I used to impersonate a dead Habeas Corpus last year: this year, it’ll be a bleeding First Amendment.

I’ll write more this weekend about the situation at Fort Lewis, which should concern us all and has already got the attention of Amnesty International. But looking at GI Voice, the newsletter of the Fort Lewis GI coffeehouse Coffee Strong, I was gobsmacked by the following cri de coeur from a young Marine.

The writer, Allen Huck, knows exactly what’s going on. His note speaks to everything we’ve come to understand about soldiers, and these wars. I reprinted in full in case someone who reads this can help. (Feel free to contact Allen directly via Coffee Strong.)

It was “Marine Corps Policy”, I guess. Before leaving Kuwait, we were handed out forms to fill out. Awful things…Did you see a dead body? Did you kill anyone? Did you participate in any sort of war crimes? Ridiculous questions. Especially, since we were never really informed of what exactly war crimes were. Maybe I did. Those thoughts continue to haunt my daily life, and my dreams.

On our return to Kuwait, we were given strict instructions on how we were to fill out these forms.

“Did you see a dead body?” – The guided answer was no. ”Did you kill anyone?” – The answer was also no. ”Do you feel you need immediate help and/or counseling?” – Absolutely not.

The questions went on. And of course, the answers were almost always “no.”

Perhaps this is the reason that PTSD is so rampant as a result of this conflict. Had we been given the help we so sorely needed, perhaps the homeless rates, drug use, domestic violence, and completely shattered lives would not be so rampant. Maybe not, but it sure couldn’t have done additional harm.

When I returned from Iraq, I was forced to fill out one of these questionnaires. I told the truth, and as a result, it disappeared. When I returned home, I went to my commend, and asked for mental health counseling. But in the Marine Corps, requests for mental health were simply not asked for. And so it was denied. As a result of that, I was separated from the Marine Corps indefinitely. I was ostracized by nearly everyone in my unit as “crazy”, which was the most horrible stigma one could be given. I was immediately kicked off base, my ID card was confiscated, along with my base vehicle stickers.

Essentially, I was banned from the Marines for requesting help.

Later on, I received phone calls stating that I was UA (the Marine Corps’ AWOL), and MP’s came to my house to take me into custody. Just about three or four months ago, I received a call that said I was reactivated, and was on the roster to be re-deployed.

Lots of complex feelings about this, reflected well here by Andrew Sullivan. But the one I loved best was that of Farai Chideya, a role model of mine for years. so I’ve reprinted it here, with my own thoughts below that. What do you think?

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When I woke up this morning to find out that President Obama had won the Nobel prize, based on diplomacy and anti-nuclear proliferation work, I immediately sent notice to my circle of friends, and then went onto the social media space to see what the other instapundits were saying.

One of them — a real, actual paid pundit — wrote, “I’m perplexed at Obama getting the Nobel Peace Prize. He’s done good work, but it does seem premature. What do you think?” That would be Nicholas Kristof of The New York Times, who has, among other things, been writing of late of the value of women in international development and diplomacy.

I tweeted back that the Prize cites Obama’s diplomacy for embracing “values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” In other words, the Nobel seems to be a “thank God you’re not trying to be a big swinging dick of a unilateral superpower” rather than a “thanks for getting rid of the nukes” letter. (If they had left the nuclear weapons out of the granting of the prize, it might actually have seemed a stronger statement.) While we are struggling mightily to come up with a strategy for the wars launched by the Bush Administration in Iraq and Afghanistan, there is little question that the level of domestic threat under this president has not skyrocketed — the leading argument against his election by some hawkish conservatives. Being the international bad cop apparently does not always make you safer.

Let’s go back to the key phrase in the Nobel announcement. It states: Obama’s “diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.” That’s a vision of, if not absolute consensus, then democratic thinking in the broadest sense. It’s a basic acknowledgment that the diverse, heterogeneous population of billions of people on this planet do have value regardless of poverty, wealth, resource, race, gender or religion. It’s an endorsement of democracy over the oligarchical governance of the Bush/Cheney years.

But at the same time that there will be a round of cheers and jeers based on this Nobel announcement, I still worry that we domestically are running out of patience with the Obama Administration. Or rather, running out of patience is not so bad; but as we’ve seen many times, running out of hope impacts everything from our health to education to economy. Many people are now asking “How long do we wait for change?” I respond that you never have to wait for change… it’s always happening. What you have to do is figure out how to manage that change and try to push it in positive directions.

But in addition to the health care wars, whose rhetoric is even bloodier than the floor of a triage ward, we now have individuals bringing weapons to presidential rallies and polls about whether the man in the Oval Office should be killed. So often we have asked the world to follow us… to follow us down the rabbit-hole of ill-conceived wars, or, more promising, into new lands of technology created by some of the best private companies in America.

Can we ask America to now follow the world… to value the diversity of our population as a symbol of the highest values in ethical life? Can we find a way to knit together a country which has become fractured and at some points flirted with calls to violence against a sitting president? With the election of Barack Obama, we got world credibility for dealing with our collective racial past. Do we have the same courage to deal with the present…. with Detroit; bankrupt California schools; and dismal job numbers? Can we take a line from the Nobel Prize and promise “to take our share of responsibility for a global response to global challenges”? Can we? Yes?

Founder of PopandPolitics.com, Farai Chideya has been a top journalist with NBC News, National Public Radiom and NBC. Her books include Don’t Believe the Hype, Trust: Reaching 100 Million Missing Voters, and her new novel Kiss the Sky. This editorial first appeared on the Huffington Post.—–

As for me: Having traced, , as the few readers of this blog know, Obama’s political origins including with the 1980s nuclear freeze movement, I felt the Prize as an early reward for his nonproliferation work, as well as encouragement to keep unraveling some of the Bush damage. But now, most of all, I hope it influences the current decisions on Afghanistan. Escalation is not a way to earn the title of international peacemaker.

Another blast from the past: from an invasion whose memory is mostly now buried under those now bleeding our soldiers.

Thinking about it now, I’m struck how how Bush I’s 1989 “Operation Just Cause” set the template for his son’s Iraq actions — a former CIA “asset” run past his pull date turned Public Enemy #1, just like Osama bin Laden. Rachel called it “Operation Pink Slip.”

Like the guy in the show above, I can’t believe it: I’m finally out of 1973. Unlike LBJ, I got out of Vietnam, sort of. (I ended up with a 60,000-word chapter, in a book that’s only supposed to be 110.000 words total!) I can almost say that I’m in the home stretch on this book, and am starting to frame its end – including scenes I witnessed personally (such as Ron Kovic confronting Colin Powell in 1995, when many thought the latter should be President). Meanwhile, the very lateness of the hour means I’m seeing another phase of the story take shape, as the Afghan war becomes the topic of the hour.The voices of vets like James Gilligan, who tunneled through Afghanistan before going to Iraq, suddenly seem more urgent to hear.

But first, a little rant, about something that’s none of my business.

The months sunk into the “Vietnam years” made me feel more strongly than ever about trends I’m seeing in some of these newer veterans’ groups — stuff I keep TRYING, in good journalistic fashion, to shut my mouth about so that I can just watch it happen in real time. It’s about the perpetual dance between dissenting veterans and groups of the sectarian left, for whom the latter are sort of a dream date.

When one young vet blithely proclaimed I could interview him at an event sponsored by World Can’t Wait, I instinctively refused, having grown up avoiding WCW’s sponsor at demonstrations in NY and Washington. I wrote a piece about WCW’s Maoist doppelganger, equally “militant” and equally cloaked in multiple spinoff organizations. Both pour a lot of money and support toward whatever young veterans they can find, support that has likely felt essential and important when the wider world is trying to ignore the wars. But the effect, throughout history, has not always been…. productive.

I don’t want to go after those two groups in particular; and I can’t claim to be against military-civilian alliances or the need to look deeply at the power structures that sustain these wars. But witness the collapse of Vietnam Veterans Against the War in 1975, as narrated by the late Steve Hassna. I met Drill Sgt, Hassna in the 1990s, and I trust his description of what he called “The Split”:

A debate started in the organization in mid `72 about the future and what to do when the war was over. By this time everyone knew that, in fact, the war was going to end soon, just not sure when. One train of thought was we “struggle”, (that’s a leftist term, for “fight the good fight”) to see the war end. Then decide what we were all about. The other was, “We need to build an organization for the revolution, be the vangaurd, and all that other crap. Continue the fight against the capitalistic power structure and embrace a Marxist- Leninist analysis for a people’s revolution, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah!!

This sort of thinking really gave most of the members in VVAW a headache, and many left in disgust. This type of thought train was coming from VVAW members and non-veterans working in the organization who had adopted that Marxist analysis. The one thing to remember is that these people were coming into VVAW to push their special agenda. They were not there to stop the war, they were there to advance their political thought. Everything from the R.U.(Revolutionary Union),R.S.B (Revolutionary Student Brigade),Venceremos, October League, S.W.P.(Sociallist Workers’ Party), CPUSA (Communist Party United States of America) and last but not least, the one, the only,the RCP (Revolutionary Communist Party). Though small in numbers, they were able to get into positions of power that would let them set VVAW policy….

The ANSWER prototype was no better, at that point still working on defending Stalin and weeding out “revisionists.” Of course, back then the FBI was watching all this – having installed an impressive set of informants by then. And the FBI was also tracking the WCW precursor the Revolutionary Union, as the latter instructed its Midwest “cadre” that ““veterans are potential revolutionary force” and advised its cadre “to link up with veterans” in the “fights . . . against the Veterans Administration for benefits” because they could use any Washington demonstrations to “begin to realize our goal of linking the veterans’ struggle with the overall anti-imperialist movement.” Not to actually secure any veterans benefits, mind you; not to heal the hole in vets’ hearts or figure out why so many were sick. It was all about the “movement.” Finally, Hassna continues:

In 1973 VVAW got a new name, and a whole new set of headaches. Now it was VVAW/WSO, VietNam Veterans Against the War/ Winter Soldier Organization. The addition of WSO meant that non veterans could join and be in positions to set policy. The left played on the guilt and pain that members had from the war. We (members) had to embrace Marx and bare our souls to our crimes against humanity. Meetings turned into political education classes, with criticism/ self-criticism periods thrown in to help us move forward for the revolution. Do I need to say how much of a royal pain in the ass all this was? On top of all this, there were people who took this crap seriously.

As you see above, they even changed the banner on the group’s newsletter, to strongly resemble the Chinese flag.

I’ve read more scholarly accounts of this entire evolution from less folksy sources; check out tthe three major histories of the VVAW to a 1975 dissertation on the G.I. movement by a rather conservative Chicagoan who points out that the sectarian left had “different priorities.” More crucially, he added, the emphasis on “hating the brass” prevented them from making common cause with the officers who agreed with them.

No way to know whether the future for today’s rapidly-morphing soldier-dissent will play out similarly. But nothing I’ve learned in the past year has made me feel, personally, any different from when I first saw Garett Reppenhagen, a man I respect hugely, first appearing at a podium with ANSWER streamed at the front.

I shouldn’t care about this, as a writer. There’s a lot of Yeatsian circle-the-gyre energy to all this. But as someone who sees the need for clear opposition to war and values the role of the soldier/vet, I do care. As the need to counter Obama-as-LBJ grows stronger, the fastest way to bury that voice in the margins is to dress it in such ridiculous clothing. Luckily, there are whole swaths that are already steering clear; I’ll watch as quietly as I can, to see what happens to the rest.